Monday, February 23, 2009

I started and abandoned not one, but two post-apocalyptic thrillers this weekend. The first was Algys Burdys's Some Will Not Die and the second was the Suicide Collectors from first time novelist David Oppegaard. Some Will Not Die was the least interesting to me. On the Amazon page, scifi writer says that it is an important work. That may well be, but overall I felt it been better done elsewhere.

The Suicide Collectors is more promising and bodes well Oppegaard's future works, but I kept comparing to the Road, which is bad news, as the Road is probably the best that single individual in a post-apocalyptic setting gets. McCarthy manages to bring his usual masterful style, while also dialing up the life sucks factor to 11 and beyond. I had been looking for more post-apocalyptic works, but I suspect that few will satisfy. I have already read, and loved, Oryx and Crake and the Cloud Atlas, so I may need to put this genre aside for now.

4 comments:

A post-apocalyptic thriller I love is Swan Song by McCammon (http://www.powells.com/biblio/2-9780671741037-4).

It is more in the style of Stephen King's The Stand.

Actually, I have enjoyed most of McCammon's books. Boy's Life is great. He has one about a werewolf fighting the Nazis, though, that is not so good. Who knew that most of life's problems could be solved by becoming a wolf?